Preliminary reports suggest that Jonny Wilkinson’s knee injury is not as bad as first thought, his club, Newcastle, said on Monday in a statement. Wilkinson was carried from the field just 34 minutes into his comeback match for Newcastle against Premiership opponents Harlequins on Sunday.
South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma will host the Vice-President of the Presidium of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Yang Hyong Sop, who is scheduled to pay an official visit to South Africa from Wednesday to Sunday. According to foreign affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa, Zuma will brief his counterpart on peacekeeping and conflict resolution efforts on the continent.
Newcastle manager Graeme Souness was cautiously optimistic about Wednesday’s Uefa Cup match at home to Olympiakos, especially as his side have not lost a single match in Europe this season. Following the 3-1, last 16, first-leg win, Souness said: ”I have been in professional football 37 years and nothing is over until it is over.”
Move over Michael. Here comes a former Japanese race queen raring to become a ”racing” queen in the man’s, man’s world of formula one. Keiko Ihara, who swapped the model’s leotard and make-up for a racing suit and helmet in 1999 at the age of 26, declares her goal to be Germany’s seven-time formula-one champion Michael Schumacher.
David Beckham is preparing for life after soccer. Following this season, he has two years remaining on his contract with Real Madrid. He arrived at the club 20 months ago, and he’s won nothing. He’ll turn 30 in May, and he knows Madrid fans are demanding and impatient.
The Constitutional Court is due to hear an application by the Department of Health on Tuesday about its controversial medicine pricing regulations. Part of the regulations, which were introduced last May to make medicines more affordable, include formulas to set the manufacturer’s price and cap the profit that pharmacists may make from selling medicines.
Controversial vitamin therapist Matthias Rath has blitzed Cape Town townships with pamphlets and posters attacking the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) as a spreader of ”disease and death among our people” and the Advertising Standards Authority as ”helping to protect drug industry monopolies”. It emerged this week that the South African National Civics Organisation in Khayelitsha has endorsed the pamphlet.
South Africa’s film industry has exploded on to the world stage with a spate of award-winning movies in the space of a few weeks. The domestic audience, though, remains in Hollywood’s thrall. Yesterday, the poignant tale of a woman infected with the Aids virus, narrowly missed out on an Oscar for best foreign language film. It was the first South African film to be nominated for an Oscar.
South African stars Natalie du Toit, Handri de Beer and Charles Bouwer showed just why they were part of the national team to the Paralympics in Athens last year, as the SA records kept crashing at the Nedbank Championships for the Physically Disabled in Durban on Monday.
Top seed Lindsay Davenport resorted to a plea for divine intervention on Monday as wind whipped desert sand around the court at the dust-plagued ,1-million Indian Wells Masters. The top seed, like 2004 men’s finalist Tim Henman, another who did it tough in gales of more than 50kph, survived what turned quickly into an unpleasant competitive experience.